Tag Archives: ADAS

Telit, a global enabler of the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced thatPLK Technology (PLK)has selected Telit’s SL869-V2 GNSS IoT module to deliver positioning functionality for Optian, a new product combining the features of an Advanced Driver Assistant System (ADAS) and a high-end automotive black box.

ADAS are systems found in modern vehicles designed to automate, adapt and enhance vehicle safety and driver experience. Safety features in ADAS include warnings for collision and accident avoidance which help drivers implement safeguards, and sharpen their focus on control of the vehicle. Adaptive ADAS features help by automating lighting, providing adaptive cruise control and autonomous braking, incorporating GPS and traffic warnings, connecting smartphones, alerting drivers about dangerous driving situations, keeping the driver within the lane of traffic and enhancing visibility of the vehicle’s blind spots.

Telit’sSL869-V2is a subminiature multi-satellite receiver module that can be installed in vehicles, industrial, wearable and portable digital devices. It delivers a high level of stability for navigation applications by tracking GPS and GLONASS at the same time, relaying accurate and fast-refreshing positioning information.

PLK started in 2000 as an in-house venture firm as part of Hyundai Motor Company and was later spun off in 2003. It specializes in the development and production of the Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) utilizing camera image sensors to recognize lanes, vehicles, light sources, traffic lights and pedestrians. PLK was the first to develop a Lane Departure Warning System (LDWS) based on color image recognition and, in 2006, became the first to line-fit it into vehicles (Hyundai Motor Company). PLK systems quickly became widely recognized for their performance and, have since 2009 been equipping 15 models around the world, including in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, China and Australia, in addition to Hyundai and KIA passenger cars.

“It is rewarding to secure the Optian project for Telit’s GNSS module. The selection process was very stringent and PLK’s choice of the SL869-V2 is a testament to the quality and performance of the product,” said Steven Kim, Sr. Sales Director of Telit Korea. “Telit GNSS modules are not only successful in the automotive sector but also in various other industries. We expect that cooperation with PLK will expand as they continue developing innovative systems and products that make driving a safer experience for motorists everywhere.”

Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry has drawn up guidelines in a bid to defend against the hacking of an envisaged next-generation driving support system that is expected to help accelerate the development of autonomous driving cars.

The ministry is concerned about the possibility that a cyberattack on the system might lead to traffic accidents.

The ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) Connect Promotion Consortium, which is developing the system with the government, plans to establish specifications on the technology to prevent such cyberattacks in autumn this year, sources familiar with the matter said. The consortium is made up of automakers and electronics-makers.

The system is aimed at helping ensure safe driving by distributing information on nearby automobiles and pedestrians, traffic signals and other relevant matters collected through radio communications to moving vehicles. The vehicles will alert the drivers to possible dangers.

The consortium will consider encrypting such information by using special technologies to prevent it from being altered, the sources said.

The next-generation driving support system is also expected to improve automatic emergency braking technologies for preventing collisions.

Autonomous driving uses such equipment as an on-vehicle camera and sensor that collect information on the surrounding environment, with related technologies being developed by automakers and electronics-makers.

The planned next-generation driving support system is being touted as a way to strengthen the safety of autonomous driving by providing information on blind spots, the sources said.

Toyota Motor Corp. is considering introducing equipment compatible with the system in a planned fully remodeled version of its Prius hybrid vehicle and other vehicle models.

In the coming years, the automobile will undergo major changes. “The traffic of the future is electric, automated, and connected,” said Dr. Volkmar Denner, the chairman of the Bosch board of management, during his presentation at “Automotive and Engine Technology,” the 14th Stuttgart International Symposium. “Automated driving can drastically reduce the number of accidents, and thus significantly increase road safety,” Denner said. “Moreover, a better flow of traffic also reduces fuel consumption.” Today, assistance functions are already assuming a broad range of driving functions. In the future, even higher-performance systems will provide drivers with increasingly comprehensive support, and gradually pave the way for fully automated driving.

The Bosch CEO highlighted the benefits of automated driving, and set out the challenges that still need to be solved. “The prospect of saving 1.2 million lives is a great source of motivation,” Denner said, in reference to the estimated number of road traffic deaths around the world each year. In Germany, almost 90 percent of all traffic accidents are caused by drivers. Here, comprehensive support in critical situations as well as in monotonous driving situations could significantly increase road safety. But more than that, automated driving is also economical. By drawing on up-to-the-minute traffic data, it can improve the flow of traffic and thus decrease the fuel consumption of every vehicle. And last, but not least: “Automated driving also keeps senior citizens mobile, and thus makes a contribution to social well-being,” Denner said.

Automated driving will come gradually

For more than ten years, adaptive cruise control has automatically controlled speed, as well as distance to vehicles ahead. The traffic jam assistant, which keeps vehicles travelling at speeds up to 60 kph in their lanes, is now being brought to market. This support for drivers will gradually be extended. “By 2020 at the latest, the technologies required for highly-automated driving will reach maturity. In the decade that follows, we expect to see fully-automated driving,” Denner said. While drivers in highly automated vehicles must take control of the vehicles after a short time, fully automated driving will allow them to sit back and let the car do the work, at least on freeways. And Bosch will be automating parking even sooner. Bosch technology will soon be easing cars into free parking spots autonomously via a smart phone app. In a few years, cars will even be able to find spots on their own in parking garages.

While technical limitations mean that the pace of development is gradual, this does have its advantages. “It gives drivers the time to gradually grasp the benefits of the new technology,” Denner said. Today’s drivers already show openness to these innovations. A Bosch survey in six European countries showed that 59 percent of respondents considered automated driving to be a good thing. However, they wanted to be able to actively switch it off. In purely economic terms, the market for driver assistance technologies is already an attractive one with excellent growth prospects. “By 2016, Bosch will be generating one billion euros in sales with driver assistance systems,” Denner said.

The Bosch “Automated Driving” project team was formed in 2011, and has since been working in Stuttgart and Palo Alto on the future of driving. And at the start of 2013, Bosch was the first automotive supplier to bring its automated driving technologies to German freeways. “The early tests in real traffic conditions have significantly sped up the development process,” Denner said.

Automated driving requires broad systems expertise

In the coming years, Bosch engineers still have a broad range of tasks ahead of them, as automated driving has an impact on all vehicle systems. “Only automakers and suppliers with broad systems expertise will succeed,” Denner said. The Bosch CEO summarized the five main development priorities as follows:

Sensor concepts for 360° environment recognition:

What types of sensor technologies are needed to capture the vehicle’s surroundings well enough to recommend the right actions? Bosch has already sold more than a million radar and video sensors. The company is drawing on this experience to develop high-performance yet economical environment recognition technology that will satisfy the demands of automated driving.

Redundant system architecture:

To maintain maximum availability in the event that one component fails, there will be a change in vehicle architecture. Bosch has already come up with the required redundancy for brakes, for instance. The iBooster electromechanical brake booster and the ESP system can bring the vehicle to a stop autonomously, independently of one another.

Reliability in the event of malfunction and hacking:

To check functional reliability, Bosch applies high-performance methods. However, the subsequent validation calls for new approaches if the effort of validating an autopilot system is to be kept at today’s level. Using the methods applied today, more than 250 million test kilometers would have to be driven. To protect vehicle systems from hacking, Bosch already relies on a dual architecture that keeps the infotainment features in the automotive electrical system separate from the systems required for driving. In addition, the electronics expert offers complementary hard- and software-based solutions for data security and access protection. “The automotive industry needs clear, consistent data-protection and data-security regulations,” Denner said.

High-precision map data:

While accuracy to the nearest meter is more than sufficient for current navigation systems, this is not sufficient for fully automated driving. For the latter, accuracy to the nearest ten centimeters are required. Moreover, the maps must be completely up to date to ensure that the vehicle can anticipate the correct route and stay on course.

Legal regulations:

According to the Vienna Convention of 1968, which serves as the basis for legislation in many countries around the world, only partly automated driving is legal. “Authorization regimes and questions related to product liability are currently the subject of intense debate among associations, governments, and insurance companies,” Denner said.

Connected vehicles are safer, more efficient, and more comfortable

Even if vehicle connectivity is not required for automated driving, it does make it safer and more efficient. A connection to the internet can provide cars with up-to-the-minute data on traffic and construction zones. It can even deliver traffic sign-related information that other vehicles have recorded. This makes it possible to optimize the navigation system’s routing. What is more, communication between vehicles enables timely warnings of potential hazards, such as the tail of a traffic jam or an approaching rescue vehicle. Vehicle connectivity will also give rise to new services, for instance when data is exchanged with monitoring centers, insurance companies, or fleet operators. The Bosch Communication Center business unit’s eCall solutions already feature in a number of automakers models. And with LeasePlan, Bosch Software Innovations, a Bosch subsidiary, is planning an entirely new fleet management concept. “In the future, connected features will be a fundamental part of the vehicle architecture, and they will make driving more comfortable, more efficient, and safer,” Denner said.

Smartphones, ADAS and the connected car

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A new system being developed by General Motors explores how pedestrians’ smartphones could be used to alert drivers to potential collisions. And the broader automotive community is taking note.

Automakers like Volvo and Toyota have unveiled pedestrian detection in the last few years, but those systems are based on refinements to in-car accident avoidance systems, such as vehicle-embedded cameras and radars.

In GM’s case, an app on a pedestrian’s smartphone transmits location information via Wi-Fi Direct, a peer-to-peer wireless standard that allows devices to connect directly without a remote access point, much like Bluetooth.

Wi-Fi chipsets in nearby vehicles receive the signal, and onboard notifications—a flashing directional arrow on a console display, in one GM demonstration—alert the driver to the presence of pedestrians or bikers in the area.

“So many people carry cell phones today,” says Don Grimm, senior researcher at General Motors, “and Wi-Fi Direct doesn’t require a hardware change. Pretty much any Wi-Fi chipset that’s out there today, if the vendor provides a driver for it, can operate as a Wi-Fi Direct device.”

Lower entry to ADAS

Deployment of the system is still about four years out, but already major car manufacturers like GM are getting serious about using smartphone technology to augment existing safety features on vehicles and to lower the barriers to entry of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) for consumers.

Smartphones may soon play integral roles in getting vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) systems off the ground as well, analysts say.

One reason is that automakers see huge cost advantages to leveraging the ubiquity of smartphones to bring the latest technology into vehicles. That’s the logic driving Ford’s Sync App Link, Mercedes-Benz’s DriveStyle app and BMW’s ConnectedDrive, tools that put the smartphone in the technological driver’s seat.

“I think some of the promise with wireless communication is the opportunity to bring some of these safety features to volume vehicles,” Grimm says. “We can bring the safety systems of our Cadillac cars to our Chevy fleet.”

“The idea of enabling an enhanced safety experience in a car by virtue of enabling communication between a driver’s mobile device and the roadside or other cars is a compelling and proven proposition,” he says. “It’s proven for tolling and proven for traffic, and there are existing solutions. It’s early days, but I think the technology exists to enhance safe and efficient driving using mobile-device connectivity.”

DSRC, a short- to medium-range communication band reserved for automotive use, is being put through its paces in testing in the United States and Europe as the industry moves closer to a fully connected vehicle.

In Europe, where V2I deployment is being pushed more stridently than in the United States, there are test beds where work zone warnings are already being communicated via DSRC. The largest trial in the United States is underway in Ann Arbor, where nearly 3000 vehicles have been outfitted with DSRC devices. That trial will wrap up later this year.

But ramping up V2V and V2I will take time, and using DSRC as the band of choice is far from a foregone conclusion. “There are some clouds on the horizon,” Lanctot warns.

Most significant among these is the possibility of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowing the sharing of the 5.9 GHz DSRC band, which could raise serious concerns about signal interference.

This leaves OEMs like GM unsure which way the connected vehicle winds will blow a few years down the line. And rather than rolling out feature-rich systems and risk deploying expensive technology that doesn’t get used, Grimm is dreaming up ways to put minimal DSRC equipment into vehicles and leaving the rest to the smartphone.

DSRC light

A DSRC chipset embedded in a vehicle might serve as a gateway between the driver’s smartphone and an external DSRC signal from another vehicle or the roadside.

“I could download a mobile app on my phone,” Grimm says. “Say I want to be notified about severe potholes or situations where someone slipped on a patch of black ice. The application would run, the vehicle portion of the system would broadcast out its location and some status information. Likewise, the vehicle would receive information from other communicating vehicles. If there was a vehicle ahead that went over a severe pothole, that vehicle would communicate with mine, and this DSRC gateway device would send the information to my phone. The phone then determines if it’s worth notifying the driver about the event.”

For a system like this to work, auto makers will need to offer seamless integration across major platforms. GM has developed its own proprietary protocol to communicate the serial port profile and Apple HID profile over Bluetooth. Going forward, MirrorLink may be another solution.

Another possibility is to bypass the embedded gateway approach and put DSRC chipsets directly into handsets. “There are companies like GeoToll right now that are talking about adding a sleeve to a phone,” Lanctot says. “I think the industry is underestimating the power of the smartphone, and how it can be leveraged in this regard.”

Clouds over the cloud

One solution Grimm doesn’t see catching on for imminent accident avoidance is cloud hosting based around the LTE standard. That’s because cell speeds can diminish with high network use and lags occur as a signal is handed off from one tower to another.

“It’s not most efficient way to communicate safety info between vehicles,” he says. “If we’re 50 feet apart on the road, it seems like a more efficient use of bandwidth to broadcast within our local area up to maybe ¼ or 1/8 of a mile rather than go two miles away to the tower and then all the way back.”

However, he does leave open the possibility that cloud-hosting services will become aggregators of road condition information. Drivers could be alerted to hazardous road conditions that other vehicles broadcast days or weeks earlier.